Serenity Trounces Star Wars

DogBotherer writes "The BBC is reporting that the film Serenity has been voted the number-one Sci Fi film of all time. Serenity is a followup to the series Firefly. The 2005 film beat out Star Wars better than two-to-one for the top honors. This result came in a poll of 3000 readers of SFX magazine.

Comments

I hate Star Wars

[TodMinuit]

But Serenity wasn't that great of a film. Firefly was an amazing TV show, but the film was without the same depth.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[AigariusDebian]

I wonder why animated sci-fi was not included in the same vote. For example anime series such as Cowboy Bebop and Trigun could very easily compete with Serenity and Star Wars in all departments, especially in story and characters.

BTW: if you liked Firefly/Serenity, then watch Cowboy Bebop series - it gave a lot of inspiration to the Firefly. And Trigun is of very similar quality but with more humour and even more bitter end.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[Captain Splendid]

Hadn't thought about it that way, and I have to say you've got my vote on that, and I'm a huge Firefly geek. And when you stop to think about the styles and skills of the involved auteurs, it makes a lot fo sense: George Lucas, able at times to bring out work that is simply stunning, but leave him running too long and he'll fuck it up, whereas Joss Whedon's always plan for the long haul (yes, I know that's par for the course when you work in TV, but his methodology is evident in most everything he does.

One is a visionary, well-versed in the peaks and troughs associated with that status. The other is simply a master storyteller, laying his foundations like a brickie and keeping his eye on the finish line.

Dang, it's 4AM, Hope any of that made sense, as I'm not gonna preview it!

Re:I hate Star Wars

[HexRei]

"Ten years from now people will still be talking about Star Wars, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, and pretty much everything else on the list. Serenity won't even be a foot note."

Out of all the other hyperbole in your post, this stands out as the most inaccurate. Serenity was an important scifi film and will be talked about still in ten years, as will the Firefly series. Perhaps not as much as Star Wars, but it doesn't help your argument any to overstate your case and alienate fans of both properties.

Re:I hate Star Wars

[holysin]

I think jarjar would be Judas, I can't see Jarjar starting a "new" religion. But he did cause the first movie to be fairly crucified by a lot of the Star wars lovers, so yeah, I stick with Judas (and not the Book of Judas sort of Judas either ;-) )

Re:"Serenity" has a vocal but minority following

[Bodrius]

If you had not seen/followed Firefly before, I'd have to agree with you, even though I really liked Serenity (to be expected, being a fan of the series).

I think the movie is pretty good, technically speaking, but it made some gigantic assumptions on the exposition of the characters, plot details, etc. It felt like a really good TV season finale, not a theatrical movie that stood by itself.
I can see how watching the movie without following Firefly would feel like catching the last episode of a series you don't watch, with closures for plot points that were never opened, and characters that you have no reason to care about... fine for late night cable, but not the same entertainment bar for paying a ticket to watch a movie in the theater.

Admittedly, I doubt adapting it to a stand-alone movie would work. A lot of what was great about Firefly as a series depended on having that span to explore the universe and the characters over an episodic show. The tempo would have to be very different.

As part of the show, I think the "movie" was great and well worth it.
As a movie per se, it was overrated, because the very vocal fans are Firefly fans, and saw it (and hyped it) as part of the show.

It reminds me of the X-files movie in that sense, except Serenity was better made and had more of the grass-roots-hype, and less of the bovine and equine abuse.